through the windows they were loath to cover with the inside shutters. The statuary on the facade seemed to come alive when illuminated at dusk, the babe in the Madonna's arms wriggling slightly, high above the street.
After their first enthusiastic impressions, the Fairchilds began to take note of the antique plumbing—the toilet in a closet so tiny that one's knees grazed the shut door once enthroned, and with a chain pull so high that Faith, not a small woman, had to stretch to reach it, producing a cascade of water that threatened never to stop. The bathtub— at the far end of the apartment from the w.c.—had lion's-paw feet and was large enough for all three of them. Faith found it handy for laundry.
The kitchen had a stone slab of a sink and a doll-sized refrigerator and stove. To get hot water, there were two Victorian contraptions, one in the kitchen, one in the bath, that required a great many pressings of buttons, lightings of matches, and prayers.
Faith loved the apartment more than any place she had ever lived.
They'd immediately gone to Mammouth, a sort of combination supermarket, department store, and hardware store in a building the size of an airplane hangar, and bought a tricycle for Ben and other essentials. He careened recklessly from room to room. There was nothing to worry about: no furniture, no heirlooms, hardly any possessions at all. Faith filled the rooms with flowers from the market, arranged in some pitchers and vases from Mammouth. She covered the table in the dining room with a few yards of paisley fabric, from the Monday nonfood market, the marche forain, and that was the extent of her decorating. She didn't miss her home, the parsonage with all their things. The feelings possessions bring seemed to depend on immediacy. Or, as she put it to herself in her current euphoria, the whole place could sink into the earth and she'd merely say, 'Too bad.”
The first night, savoring the cheese course, still suffering from decalage horaire, jet lag, and feeling slightly drunk—Tom on the excellent Cote du Rhone he'd discovered he could buy in bulk at the vinotheque nearby and Faith on the grape juice she'd found at Malleval, a fancy epicerie—they'd watched the sun set and asked themselves how they were ever going to be able to leave.
And now after she put the food from the market away, this was how Faith started a long-overdue letter to her younger sister and only sibling, Hope. Their parents had stopped short at Charity. Hope was a newlywed, living and working in New York City with her husband, Quentin, and their yours, mine, and ours Filofaxes.
I can't remember ever being so happy. Tom says it's my hormones, but he's grinning, too. Even the job of switching from winter to summer clothes early—you know how boring that is, and in New England, you no sooner drag all the stuff out than the season has , changed again. This year it was easy, because nothing fit Ben or me and I decided to wait to get things here. You must be wondering what it's like in Lyon. Very different from Paris. No place is like Paris, but I think it's more livable here. The Leblancs have been sweethearts. I liked them immediately. We've been there twice for meals en famille and sit and laugh and talk for hours. They have two children: Stephanie, who's thirteen and can seem thirty, as well as seven when she plays with Ben, and her nine-year-old brother, Pierre. He's very solemn and like all these French children, so perfect in their long Bermudas and polo shirts, Chipie, the hot brand and very branche, of course. The small children in Benjamin's school, the garderie, look as if they are going to a birthday party every day. But the marque with the greatest cachet for the preschool set is—Oshkosh! Very expensive and treated like gold.
We've also met some of the other people in our building. The d'Amberts live directly below us and their apartment stretches from Place d'Albon to Place St. Nizier, so they look out at the church on one end and the river on the other. The Saone, that is. I've finally gotten them straight. We're hi Presqulle, the center of the city, which extends like a finger between the Saone and the Rhone. Lyon is a very walkable city and Ben and I go exploring every day. He's changing so fast. You won't recognize your grown-up nephew when you see him next, and I miss my little two-year-old. I think this is how kids get their parents to produce siblings for them to play with.
It's hard to describe our apartment's location. Two buildings back onto and around a kind of courtyard, except no court—more like a large, open elevator shaft. Everyone uses the deep sills for plants, small laundry lines, and for cooling pots. The windows are all discreetly curtained, of course, but not always closed, and I'm becoming dangerously voyeuristic—or whatever it is when you eavesdrop, too. I can see the Saone if the windows in the apartment across from us are open and at the right angle. I can also see the photos of their ancestors hanging on the wall— Grand-pere looks remarkably like Lenin, or maybe it isn't Grand-pere at all. It's a bit strange to know so much about your neighbors—what they're having to eat, the state of their lingerie—without knowing who they are or what they look like in some cases. By the way, the French really do say 'ooh la la' or 'ooh la' for short. They also say merde a lot, and I don't think it's as bad as saying 'shit' at home. Anyway, back to the travelogue.
Vieux Lyon, the medieval part of the city, is on the other side of the Saone and I haven't been there much yet. The best cheese, cakes, chocolate, and sausages are all on the other side of the Rhone. I know this may not fascinate you as much as it does me, but it tells you how I'm spending my days. (Citibank, you'll be happy to hear, has an office on the next block. So we are not totally devoid of amenities.) Not getting much done on Have Faith in Your . Kitchen, but I plan to incorporate lots of Lyonnais ji recipes into it and so this all falls under the category of if research. | Faith looked up from the letter and out the window to j| the square below. Another thing that was making it difficult to work on the cookbook she was writing was the noise. ; Not the traffic, or occasional siren, but the music from the « clochard's radio. Clochard was the word for 'tramp,' she'd ,'| learned, and the literal translation did not take into account !! the kind of romanticism these men—and a few women—of , j the roads had been invested with by their more prosaic jj compatriots. She wouldn't have minded a little Edith Piaf '1 or Charles Aznavour for atmosphere, but this clochard had other tastes—the French equivalent of elevator music and j loud.
He arrived each morning quite punctually, spread out a small tattered blanket, took a couple of bottles of wine from the battered attache case he carried like a proper homme d'affaires, then positioned his animals—an old mutt and a rabbit in a cage—and sat down. Just in time for the first mass. He took a small brass bowl from his case, set it down, and placed a ten-franc piece dead center. By the end of the day when he reversed the proceedings, his bowl runneth over. Faith wasn't too sure what the animals were intended to convey—a latent sense of responsibility or simply colorful window dressing. He was often joined by other clochards and frequently by non-clochards, especially teen- agers, all of whom appeared to invest him with some special kind of wisdom. The court of the bearded philosopher beg-gar. The large, greasy-looking cap, casquette, he always wore—his crown. She resumed writing.
So, there are the d'Amberts. They need a big apartment because they have five children. I see them on the stairs, very polite, very BCBG, 'bon chic, bon genre,' Stephanie Leblanc told me. It's some sort of French version of a well-born Yuppie. Stephanie did not seem to be all that impressed. Tom told me the other version he'd heard from Paul, 'bon cul, bon genre,' considerably cruder and roughly translates as 'nice ass, may be underused.' I don't know the d'Amberts well enough yet to know to which, if any, category they belong. They do have a very elegant card on their mailbox and a fancy, highly polished brass nameplate on their door, though.
Then above us are the Joliets. He's also at the university and always to be found at the forefront of whatever anyone is protesting, Paul told us. Madame is Italian, Valentina, and owns a small art gallery a few blocks away. She has invited us to a vernissage, an opening, Saturday night. She's very lively, very pretty. No kids. She told me her husband was enough.
On the top floor, there are some students and, in a closet-sized apartment, Madame Yvette Vincent, the widow of another professeur—it's quite an academic building. Madame is over eighty and climbs up and down the stairs several times a day to do her marketing or take her little dog out. (Everybody seems to have dogs here, if the streets are any evidence. We even saw a couple bring their dog into a restaurant we ate at the other night, and order for him. When the food came, it was garnished with parsley, just like ours. Bonne preparation, as if FiFi would notice!) Back to Madame Vincent. Besides being agile, she's extremely elegant— well coiffed and very a la mode suits. I had a chance to see her apartment when she invited me for a cup of tea. The main room was filled with armoires, commodes, tables, fragile little chairs all from Louis somethingth. Her bed was behind a silk drape, which she proudly pulled to one side. Ben's crib was bigger. We drank from Sevres cups, of course, or I should say, bien sur. My French is improving
